Hola de Montezuma

I was fine for the first couple of days, but the sun, the heat, and a bottle of green water put me down for a metric day. Luckily, I am back in the saddle again.

Acapulco, Mexico

I have yet to plunge deep into Pacifica; I have yet to feel the cooling green and azul waters; I have yet to pull on my french free diving fins and afix my low-displacement mask onto my ready face. The bay is not crisp and clean, so instead of ruining my first time in a long time — my maiden dive — I have decided to wait a while.

In the morning, I awake before Mark and enjoy the calm lap of the water outside my State Room's open portal, the bright stucco of the homes on the steep rises encircling our marina. The yachts, in transit for their billionaire owners, gleam.

As many of you know, I also madly send out text messages. Love notes from Mexico on my T-Mobile world phone. Some of you are coy and never respond, but I thank those who have taken the time to figure out their phone.

Mark finally awakes. He is groggy for some time, but after a spell, he wakes and jumps into the skiff and buzzes out to the pier, where he searches for some Mexicans who work on the boat for him. I make the breakfast, of the foodstuff we bought the night before at the bodega. Yesterday morning, we enjoyed the largest, most delicious papayas I have ever tasted. Hawaiian papayas are yellow, ripe; papayas in Acapulco are reddish orange, ruddy and battle-scarred. The limes are the size of golf balls and intense in their sour. Drizzled atop a papaya half, the breakfast is completed with cafe Americano from the Moka Express. Usually, we balance it out with hand-squeezed orange juice, a tin cup of meusli covered in yogurt and mixed with strawberry preserves, raw almonds, or currants. Since I squeeze the oranges with my big hands directly into a stainless bowl, and then strain the juice into another stainless bowl through a collander, we drink our OJ from giant mixing bowls and eat our cereal from a cup. Oh, how decadent our life!

Since there is plenty of business left undone, we spend most of our days doing business through the CyberOasis internet cafe. Its about $1.50 per hour and each workstation has everything on it one can imagine. There is a lot of work to be done for both the white collar world of our consultancies and for the leisure class world of the 42-foot catamaran.

Okay, the truth is, I rush to the internet cafe to see if there are any emails from Wendy; thankfully, there usually are. And the bonus is that I usually receive some love notes from the Posse, as well. Okay, I also admit that I cal Wendy as well. Total luxury! Alas, once we are all bundled up and out of port, the benefits of GSM go poof and I can neither text nor call. So, I am tickling your flanks delightfully until my umbilical is woefully cut.

Today is Ash Wednesday. Its now Lent. What should I give up? I don't think its terribly prudent to give anything up so close to one's birthday, now is it?

To me, this current day-to-day sounds pretty darn good. Sadly, I made some innocuous but painful choices that have effectively grounded me for about 24-hours. I consider it an important innoculation, but at the time it was most unpleasant. Here's what happened.

Although I was enjoying Wendy's gift, an SPF 30 Neutrogena sun block, I was not paying enough attention to those things we in DC have not had to bother with in months, mainly exposure, heat, and dehydration. In addition, moving from my fat and meat-rich Atkins diet to the fiber rich world of fresh fruit and Mark's vegetarian lifestyle coupled with my realizing that the water bottle that Mark gave me for my use was filled with green water leads me to believe that my KO last night was a one-two punch: a little bit of hola de Montezuma and a lot of heat exhaustion.

But lunch and dinner have been amazing so far. I have never had mole, which is an ancient chocolate-based sauce you might be familiar with from the film, Chocolat. I had it poured over achile relleno at a local cafe here and it was not chocolatey at all but rather rich and spicy. Although looking like a thin tar, the sauce was light and subtle and added to the less chile. The food down here is far from tex-mex, which is what I am used to. The Mexican food here is a lot lighter and much more of the flavor comes from sauteeing and from spicing rather than from the copious amounts of cheese comprising most of the mexican fare I have eaten in the US. The cheese here in Mexico — at least in Acaculco — is new cheese, similar in texture to fresh mozerella.

Our evenings have been devoted to watching bad spy movies. The good one was called I Spy and features Owen Wilson (and his nose) and Eddie Murphy (and his Ego). Wendy thinks the nose can be fixed but I think that Eddie Murphy is a goner. The bad movie was still a lot of fun. To poop on! It enjoyed some pretty cool actors: Lucy Liu and Antonio Banderas. Here it is called Permiso de Mantar but in IMDB and in the US its called Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. This really must have gone out straight to video because films really cannot get much worse than this film. Funnily enough, according to this movie, the DIA runs the Shadow Government. I learn something new every day.

Tonight I think it'll be another movie. After sleeping for more than 14-hours in a go, I might be a little stir crazy.

Two night ago, Mark and I did burn some Velvia 50ASA slide film through my Lomo. Three roles. We explored most of the seafront and into the dangerous amusement park wherein parents attempt to collect their childrens' life insurance policies. These rides remind me ofthe rides I enjoyed as a child in a less litigious Honolulu. Back in the 70s, very few of my friends were killed in those rust-addled death traps, so I am sure these are just as dangerous, but I assume just as protected by Special Ops-level guardian angels.

Supposedly, we will be departing by Friday, although considering everything, I don't see the sailing beginning until the weekend. There is still hardware from the Yacht out being polished at a local chroming shop. There are still workers on the boat who are polishing rigging with toothbrushes and there are still three or four films yet to see for $4.

Until then, the mobile phone and SMS info works, so check out the contact info. I suggest SMSing me -- texting me -- as its a cheaper way for me to converse with you. And its a pretty fly technology I am sure you didn't know your little "I bought it because its cute" cellphone was such a cool tool.